Syria death toll rises
A spike in regime air attacks and fighting has raised the death toll in Syria’s war, AFP reported Thursday (February 13th).
Some 5,000 people have died in just three weeks — an average of 236 people a day, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The latest daily death tolls in Syria have been the highest since the war began nearly three years ago, AFP said.
On Wednesday, at least 51 people were killed in Aleppo alone, mostly civilians in air raids targeting opposition-controlled areas, the Observatory said.
Explosives-packed barrels or “barrel bombs” dropped from fixed-wing aircraft or helicopters killed 38 people there, including seven children, it said.
In Deraa in the south, 31 people were killed, again mostly in “barrel bomb” attacks, the Observatory said.
Air strikes on Yabrud as well as other nearby fighting pushed some 400 families to flee for shelter to Arsal in neighbouring Lebanon in the past four days, Dana Suleiman of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said via Twitter on Thursday.
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